Activity 1 Watch this video about sharing work and write a post about what you learned.

Activity 2. Check out this story using remix and fair use of video. Leave a comment belowafter watching the video. What was interesting, positive or negative about it?

Activity 3. Find an image or piece of music. Add it to your post and write a poem relating to the image or music. Invite your readers to write their own poems. PS April is Poetry Month. Thanks to Mrs Hutchison for this idea.

Activity 4. Similar to activity 3. Find an interesting landscape image. Write the beginning of a story relating to your image. Remember to include a conflict of some sort between your characters. Invite your readers to finish the story. How many different endings can you get? Which ending do you prefer?

Activity 5. Write a sentence using just images – no words.

Activity 6. Find 5 images that create a story – again no words.

Activity 7.Create a slideshow, photo gallery or poster about your interests to add to your about me page or as a separate post.

Mixing up your images using these types of tools can really spice up your posts! Leave a comment on this post, if you or your class can recommend some other image sites to add to this list.

Activity 9– Zoom out from an image

We first tried this activity in the challenge in September 2010. Choose a picture, and have your readers zoom out, so to speak, by leaving comments. Check out the example from Huzzah who finished their story. If doing this activity, include the word ‘zoom’ in your title so I can find it easily. Remember to give attribution. Most important here is to read previous comments, so you can add to the story.

If you have used images in any previous posts you have written, then you are ethically obliged to go back to the post and give the correct attribution or take the image out of the post if it does not have the right creative commons license.

Activity 11 – Create a jigsaw from your image. Check out how Mrs Schmidt’s students did this for a previous activity. Here is a post from Mrs Schmidt with a tutorial on how to create the jigsaw images.

Activity 12– Tell the story of the picture

From Bill Ferreirae – I sometime find a picture and tell students to use that picture to come up with a story. It can be about the picture, what happened before, what will happen next, etc. So, here is the image I have chosen for you to start with. Copy the image to your post, then write the story. Remember to give attribution. If you don’t have your own blog, tell your story in a comment here.

This week was going to be the game week but it has to be postponed until next week. So far only two mentors have replied to the email I sent about them helping out in the second game.

So really this week is going to be the last week for you to prove to your teachers what you have learnt about blogging.

The activities this week will involve you doing the following:

adding hyperlinks so your readers can find out more on the topic

adding images with correct attribution

adding categories and tags to your posts

being able to write in paragraphs about a topic

stretching your imagination by using a tool other than writing

Again the activity relates to the number 10.

Write a post about 10 of your favourite things. It can’t be ten movies or ten games, but must be about ten different things.

Some examples could be:

movie star

book to read

place to travel in the future

invention ever made

blog post you have written

etc, etc, etc

This post will be ten paragraphs long, one for each of your favourite things. In at least three of your paragraphs include a link to another website. Include at least two images related to your favourite things. Make sure you have tagged and categorized your post. Use a tool other than writing to tell us about one of your favourite things eg include a video or Voki or audioboo or slideshow – the list is endless.

As I am expecting fantastic posts for this, you will have two weeks to do this. Next week will be the two games and the final week will be an evaluation of the challenge, so really make a great effort on this post.

If you are using Kidblog or blogger, please leave a comment on this post when you have finished yours. I have been checking with Edublogs and apparently the pingbacks and trackbacks are only working for Edublog blogs not for any other platform. So the only way I will know if you have completed this activity is if you leave a comment on this post and include the URL of your post.

Just before the last challenge I will write a post highlighting the thirty bloggers and five classes I feel have done a great job with this post. They will have included links, images, other tool, tags and category as well as having left a comment on this post or if using Edublogs sent a pingback to me.

Good luck everyone on this post that will show off to your teachers what you are capable of doing using your blog!

Welcome to our second group of activities in the blogging challenge. Again three areas to improve in your blog, then some choices for posts for this week.

Improve your blog

Avatars

I notice many of our newer bloggers don’t have avatars yet. Visit this post where I explain how to create and upload your avatars. Click on one of the avatars to take you to the actual site. Maybe as a class you could then create a slideshow of the avatars you created. Or maybe you could create an avatar for each member of your family and put those in a slideshow. Which slideshow? Check out the Web tools to use on the right sidebar of this blog.

Blogroll

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other student blogs, you might start finding some blogs that you really like. You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL? This is where a blogroll comes in handy. If you look on the right sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have three subheadings such as:

Get Help

Web tools to use

Animals blogging

These are my blogroll. I can choose to have them in total (headings will then be in alphabetical order – see Miss T below), or just one category at a time.

Check out the blogroll categories from these students and classes: Kids in the Mid (left sidebar), Miss T (left), Mr Miller (right), Teegan (left, some are actually images as links too), Bree (far right)

To create the link category headings, go to your dashboard> links > link category You might include classmates, overseas friends, class blogs, get help and websites.

To make sure these appear on your sidebar, go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag the links or blogroll across to the sidebar area.

Add some links to your blogroll

To add some links such as the challenge blog and your friends’ blogs, go to your dashboard> links> add new. Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL. Be internet savvy and only use first names of students.

You might include at least 10 classmates, some overseas friends you have visited, Student Challenge Blog, The Edublogger, Help from Edublogs or kidblogs or weebly etc, your class/school blog and/or intranet and websites you often visit.

Here is a post by Sue Waters about creating a blogroll. Follow the instructions for Step 2 in her post.

Hyperlinking

You will notice in today’s challenge, I have included a lot of hyperlinks to other places to visit. If you do this in posts, you are showing your readers that you have researched the topic – you are not just writing about what your friends have told you or things you think you know. You can hyperlink in posts, pages and comments – handy if commenting on kidblog and you want to leave your blog URL.

write about your passions

You might want to start writing a series of posts about your passion. Remember your readers may know absolutely nothing about what you love, so start by explaining things well. Send them to other websites to get more information (called hyperlinking, which is one of the improve your blog activities for this week)

But a blog post or page is written in your words, so don’t copy and paste from other websites – always use your own words first and then send your visitors to other places on the internet to find out more.

Write a post, create a movie, find websites, create a slideshow, create a comic – there are infinite ways to present your passion.

If you know of a great tool to use, leave a comment below with a link to the tool URL in your comment.

Don’t know what to write about:

Visit these websites – look around them and write a post about some part that intrigued you.

An update first: we now have as at today 141 classes, over 1300 students and 44 mentors from 25 countries taking part in the 8th student blogging challenge. I hope you are all enjoying the activities and making the most of visiting other classes and students around the world.

In your profile, have you included your user name and your blog URL? Before leaving a comment on another blog that is the same platform as you eg Edublogs, Blogger, make sure you are signed into your blog. This way you won’t have to fill in lots of information when leaving a comment. Will also mean the owner of the blog you commented on will only have to click on your name or avatar and they will be directed straight to your blog.

As you visit and read other blogs, you might want to leave a comment and then add that blog to your blogroll or links. These are going to be the two things we look at this week in the challenge.

Blogging

What makes a good comment?

Check out this post and video from Mrs Yollis’ grade 3 students about how to write a quality comment.

Some comments you receive are actually spam – Nike shoes, handbags, essay dissertations etc Often these comments will have a link in them directing you to a website where they want you to buy something.

Other spam comments often have facebook.com or google.com or yahoo.com in the email address. Sometimes these comments make sense but they will often have a spelling error and they usually have nothing to do with the post you have written.

Make sure you don’t approve these type of comments but click spam instead.

Some people might leave a comment like ‘Wutsup?’ – this would go in the trash.

Some students who don’t know about quality comments might say ‘This is a cool blog. Please visit my blog at ……’ This would also go in the trash. Or maybe you visit their blog first and thank them for leaving a comment on yours but mention it was not acceptable as it didn’t relate to the post.

Adding great blogs to your blogroll

To make it easy for visitors to find the blogs of your classmates and friends you need to add their link on your blogroll.

If using Edublogs, in your dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag across links or blogroll to your sidebar.

If you want to group your links, then use link categories. These might be ‘My classmates’, ‘Class blogs’, ‘Overseas friends’. You might also include links about your hobbies so you might need a category for ‘Cricket’ or ‘Tasmanian Devils’ or ‘Online Games’.

To create these link categories, go to dashboard> links> Link Categories> put in the name of a category and save.

Back to your dashboard> links> add new link. Fill in the name of the person, then under web address put in the URL of their blog. Remember to include the http:// part. Choose which category you want the link to be under then click add link.

Students

Make sure you have read the information above under blogging and checked out the links to other students regarding commenting.

Write a post, create a video or create a poster about commenting. Might be tips to get more visitors, guidelines for acceptable comments on your blog, examples of good and bad comments – think outside the square.

Most student blogs are created at school, but to personalise your blog, add some posts about topics that are of interest to you – your favourite sports, hobbies, colours, books, games etc. Remember to leave a question at the end of the post as this will invite comments to be left.

Learn some HTML code to include a link in a comment. Mrs Yollis explains this in her post link above. Might be a way to include a link to your blog whenever you leave a comment.

Make sure your blogroll has links to at least ten students – at least five of them who are not your classmates.

Visit some overseas blogs, leave a quality comment which includes some HTML code – a heart, a smiley or your blog URL as an HTML link.

Check out teacher activity 4 on this post to create post categories. These are different to link categories.

Teachers

Make sure you have read the information above under blogging and checked out the class comment links.

Look at your class sidebar. Do you have lots of links for students to visit? Would these be better in a page rather than your sidebar? Check out the subject links on my IT blog and how I have created links to websites.

If your students don’t have their own blogs, but you want them to write posts on the class blog, then add them as users to your blog. Then create a post category or tag for each student. Check out some classes who do this: WPPS Grade 1 use tags, Climb High use categories, Mr Fachet has contributors on this Blogger blog, Shirley has categories, Mrs Lucchesi has categories, Mrs Bliss uses categories.

Notice all posts can be categorized. This makes it easier to find posts on similar topics. Create some post categories on Edublogs by going to your dashboard> posts> new category. Once you have created the categories you need to go back and change it on your posts. To do this simply, go to dashboard> all posts, hover under a post and click on quick edit> change the category and save.

Visit at least ten other class blogs. What widgets do they have that might be suitable for your blog and student age group? eg Shelfari, Wonderopolis Write a post about the widgets you have added and why. Maybe include a poll (perhaps using Poll Daddy) about which widget your visitors enjoy the most.

Have you discussed commenting guidelines with your students? Have you included them as a page on your blog? Do your students’ parents know about your blog? Have they started leaving comments? Write a post directed at your parents. Ask them some questions or ask for some answers eg How are computers and technology used in your job?

Remember if you don’t use Edublogs, check out the links in the ‘Get Help’ section of this blog to find tutorials and support pages for your blogging platform.

Next week we look at adding images, using creative commons and giving attribution. We will also look at Earth Hour 2012.

If I came to your blog and wanted to find a post you had written about your favourite foods or about your digital footprint – how could I find it easily without looking through all your posts?

I would use your categories and tags in your sidebar.

If you want to get to your best friend’s blog and you are not sure of the URL, how could you get there from your own blog? You want to get to your school blog or intranet from home – how can you do it easily?

You could use your blogroll or links in the sidebar.

As you can see from my answers, your sidebar is a very important part of your blog. It helps guide your visitors around your blog. But it can also be a distraction if there are too many games, pets, loud music on the sidebar.

So this week’s challenge relates to your sidebar as well as me finding my way to your community if I were ever to visit.

Students and classes

Activity 1 – Create your blogroll categories

What is a blogroll, you ask? Now that you have started visiting other student blogs, you might start finding some blogs that you really like. You might visit these every day, but how do you remember their URL? This is where a blogroll comes in handy.

If you look on the right sidebar of this blog, you will notice I have two subheadings such as:

Blogs to visit

Get Help

These are part of my blogroll. The subheadings or link categories are alphabetical beginning with numbers. So you will need to think about what the names are for your categories.

To create the link category headings, go to your dashboard> links > link category You might include classmates, overseas friends, class blogs, get help and websites.

To make sure these appear on your sidebar, go to dashboard> appearance> widgets and drag the links or blogroll across to the sidebar area.

Activity 2 – Add some links to your blogroll

To add some links such as the challenge blog and your friends’ blogs, go to your dashboard> links> add new. Remember to say what category you put the link under and also use http:// in front of the URL. Be internet savvy and only use first names of students.

You might include at least 10 classmates, some overseas friends you have visited, Student Challenge Blog, Bloggers Cafe, The Edublogger, Help from Edublogs, your class/school blog and/or intranet and websites you often visit.

Here is a post by Sue Waters about creating a blogroll. Follow the instructions for Step 2 in her post.

You are going to need lots of student and class links on your blogroll ready to play a game in a couple of weeks.

Activity 3 – Creating at least 4 post categories

Just to confuse you, there is also another heading called ‘categories’. Categories are like the chapter headings in books while tags are like the index words at the back of a book.

This though, relates to the posts you write about. These categories appear in the header area or at the footer section of each post you write. My post categories for this blog are on the left sidebar and named ‘Challenge Sections.’ My tags are in the right sidebar and named ‘What the posts are about.’

What questions have you got about the part of the country you want to visit?

What do you already know about that place?

Why do you want to visit there in particular?

Write a post leaving some questions for your readers to answer. Think about the countries where our student blogging challenge bloggers are from. They should be able to answer your questions.

Activity 7 – Create a poll

&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt; &amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/4793385/” mce_href=”http://polldaddy.com/poll/4793385/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;If you were to visit Australia, where would you most love to go:&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;span style=”font-size:9px;” mce_style=”font-size:9px;”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;a href=”http://polldaddy.com/features-surveys/” mce_href=”http://polldaddy.com/features-surveys/”&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;survey software&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/a&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;/span&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;&amp;amp;amp;amp;lt;br /&amp;amp;amp;amp;gt;

Survey your visitors by asking about where they would like to visit in your country. Use Polldaddy or a similar survey tool and embed the poll in either a post or your sidebar. Once the poll has closed, perhaps you could write a post about the most popular place mentioned in your poll.

The first week of challenges involves lots of things which I hope you have already done to your blog. Just go down the page like a checklist and tick off as you get the activities completed.

1. Changed your theme.

All Edublogs blogs begin with the same theme. There are over 100 different themes to choose from. Some have one sidebar, some have two sidebars, some allow you to change the headers. But you need to decide which theme suits you best. Check out this post about themes To change your theme, go to your dashboard > appearance > themes.

You might like to write a post about why you chose that particular theme. How difficult was it to choose? What were you looking for in a theme?

If you use Kidblogs I don’t think you have a choice of themes, so you won’t be able to do this activity.

2. Written your ‘about’ page.

Remember pages stay in the one place and are located in your header or in the ‘Pages’ widget. What you will be writing normally are posts and they will gradually disappear off the bottom of the column on your blog. If using blogspot, you have an ‘About’ area in your profile, those using Kidblogs will need to write a post about themselves instead. Check out the example ‘About’ pages below:

If you have already written an about page last year, you might need to update it for this year. Things will have changed. If you know of a great example of an ‘About’ page, please leave a comment on this post. Make sure you have added the ‘Pages’ widget to your sidebar. Dashboard> appearance> widgets> drag ‘pages’ across.

3. Added your blogger, commenter or helper badge to your sidebar.

As you are taking part in the challenge, a designer Tammie at Edublogs has created a badge you can put on your blog sidebar. Click on this underlined link and it will take you to the post telling you what to do. If you can’t add it to your sidebar, you could put it in a post instead. Make sure you have added your ‘Recent comments’ widget to your sidebar.

4. Write a post about why students and classes should visit your blog.

Why is your blog going to be interesting? What will you be posting about? What could they learn from reading your blog? Make sure you hyperlink back to this challenge post somewhere in your post. That way, I will get a trackback or pingback and I will be able to visit your blog to read your post, otherwise I won’t know if you have written anything about this challenge.

eg. This post is for Challenge 1 in the September 2010 challenge. Highlight ‘Challenge 1′ then use the Link icon – chains joined – and type in the URL for this post. Check out how Abbey has created the trackback here.

5. Leave a comment on this post telling me three interesting things about you then ….

Check out the page called “Sept. 2010 students’ and visit ten blogs there where students have similar interests to you and leave a comment on their blog. Then come back here and leave a comment mentioning a blog you found really interesting – remember to tell me the student’s first name, country and blog URL so I can then go and visit them as well.

6. Classes only

Each week you will need to have visited the blog of the class on either side of your name on the ‘Sept. 2010 classes’ page. This will make sure each class gets visited by at least two other classes. Remember to check out any student blogs that are on the class sidebars. Then choose some other classes from the list that you would like to visit – students of similar age perhaps. If browsing with Internet Explorer, remember to use the ‘Sept 2010 classes use IE’ link.

On your class blog, write a post about why students and classes should visit your blog. What will they learn from reading your posts? Are there any skills your class has that they could pass on to other classes and students?

7. Now students like Abbey who have already taken part in the challenges in March will already have done most of these things, so I want you to write a post on the following topic.

Think about something important you have learned outside of school – remember we should all be life long learners not just learners while at school. How did you learn it? Why is it important to you? Who or what taught you about it? How has this learning helped you in your life?